By the Rivers of Babylon

by Nelson DeMille

  She tried to bring her anger under control. “The ends, Mr. Hausner, do not justify the means.”

  “Tonight they do.”

  She spoke slowly and precisely. “Look, if we get out of here alive, I want us to have our humanity and self-respect intact. In a very short time, you have disbanded a democratic assembly and gotten permission to torture a wounded man.”

  “I’m only surprised it took me so long.” He lit a cigarette. “Look, Miriam, round one goes to us bully boys. And probably every round from now on. So you people just get it through your heads that you’re superfluous except as soldiers. I’m going to save this fucked-up situation even if I have to turn this goddamned hill into a concentration camp.”

  She slapped him hard across the face. His cigarette flew through the air.

  The people remaining in the hut pretended not to see or hear the slap in the dark. The room was still.

  Hausner cleared his throat. “Mr. Burg has work to do and you’re holding him up, Mrs. Bernstein. Please leave.”

  She left.

  Hausner turned to Dobkin. “We’ll inspect the perimeter and see how we stand.” He stepped across the room. “Isaac, as soon as you get something concrete, send a runner out to us.” He indicated his flight bag on the floor. “Here is an identikit and psychological profile on Rish. Take care of it.”

  Burg stared at the flight bag, then looked up. “How, in the name of God—?”

  “Just a very lucky guess. Nothing more.” He knelt beside Kaplan. He was almost asleep now, probably drugged. He was not likely to be awakened by the sounds of an interrogation. “Will you be all right, Moshe? Do you want to be moved?”

  Kaplan shook his head. “I’ve seen it before,” he said weakly. “Get out to the perimeter. Come up with a good defense.”

  “What other kind of defense is there for us, Moshe?”

  “No other kind.”

  * * *

  As Hausner and Dobkin walked, a scream from the hut pierced the still night air. If Brin’s first shot committed them to the fight, thought Hausner, then torturing the Arab committed them to a policy of no surrender. They could not ask for better treatment than they gave. There was no turning back now.

  They walked along the river side of the hill. Every fifty meters or so men and women stood or sat in pairs or singly, looking down at the Euphrates.

  They were mostly the junior aides, Hausner noticed. The secretaries and interpreters. The young men and women of any major diplomatic mission. They had looked forward to New York. Some of them might make it.

  Hausner mentioned to Dobkin that they’d have to see to it that the ten delegates pulled guard duty along with everyone else. “That will cut down on their time for meetings,” Hausner said. Dobkin smiled.

  They found McClure and Richardson sitting on a sand rise in the ground. Hausner approached them. “Bad luck for you two.”

  McClure looked up slowly. “Could’ve been worse. Could’ve spent my home leave with my wife and in-laws.”

  Richardson stood. “What’s the situation?”

  “Grim,” replied Hausner. He briefed them, then asked, “Do you two want to leave under a white flag? You’re in an American Air Force uniform, Colonel. And you, Mr. McClure, I’m sure have proper identification as an American State Department employee. I’m fairly certain they wouldn’t harm either of you. The Palestinians are trying not to antagonize your government these days.”

  McClure shook his head. “Funny coincidence. I had a great-uncle who was killed at the Alamo. Used to wonder how it felt being under siege. You know? Rejecting offers of surrender. Seeing the Mexos pouring over the walls. That must’ve been one hell of a fight.”

  Dobkin understood enough of the English to be confused. “Is that supposed to be an answer?”

  Hausner laughed. “You are a strange man, Mr. McClure. But you’re welcome to stay. You, by the way, have the only gun on this side of the hill.”

  “Kind of figured I did.”

  “Right,” said Hausner. “So if someone on this side yells, get over there and pop off some rounds until I can send a few automatic weapons men over from the east slope.”

  “Will do.”

  Hausner felt confident with McClure. “Actually, I don’t think they will try this side.”

  “Probably not.” McClure looked at the sky, then at Hausner. “You better get some organization in this defense before the moon sets.”

  “I know,” said Hausner. “Thanks, Mr. McClure.” He turned to Richardson. “You too, Colonel.”

  “Call me Tom,” said Richardson. He switched to Hebrew which surprised Hausner and Dobkin. “Listen, I’m with you, but I think you should try to negotiate.”

  Dobkin stepped closer to Richardson and answered him in Hebrew. “Negotiate for what? We were on a mission of peace and half of us are dead now. What are we supposed to negotiate?”

  Richardson didn’t answer.

  Hausner spoke. “We’ll take it under advisement, Colonel. Thank you.”

  McClure seemed unconcerned that everyone was speaking a language he couldn’t understand. Hausner felt the tension between the two Americans. There was something wrong here.

  12

  Hausner and Dobkin continued to walk the perimeter. It was almost a perfect oval, or as Dobkin had described it, the size and shape of a race track, which led Hausner to agree with Dobkin that it was probably not a natural formation. The top of the mound or hill was fairly level, further evidence of a man-made structure underneath. The flat top was broken only by blown dunes and water-eroded gullies or wadis. There were places where a round knoll stuck up from the flat surface. Dobkin explained that these were most likely watchtowers that had risen above the walls of the citadel. Dobkin placed men and women on each one of them.

  They counted thirty men and women who had somehow gotten themselves into position. Most of them had just placed themselves instinctively. Dobkin had placed only a few right after the crash.

  Hausner stood by as Dobkin considered the problems of cover, concealment, and fields of fire. Dobkin shifted and adjusted the line to take better advantage of the terrain. He issued orders to start piling bricks and dirt for breastworks and to dig foxholes wherever it was possible to dig in the dusty soil. Hausner wondered if it weren’t really a useless exercise, since there was virtually no firepower among the defenders.

  Burg had given Dobkin his Colt .45 automatic and Dobkin in turn had given it to one of the stewards, Abel Geller, whom he placed in a strategic position. Hausner handed his Smith & Wesson .22 to a young stenographer named Ruth Mandel. “Do you know how to use this?”

  She looked at it in her small hand. “I spent my time in the Army.”

  Hausner counted three handguns of small caliber plus his men’s six Smith & Wesson .22’s. His own made ten. Then there was Joshua Rubin with the Uzi, Brin with the M-14, and his other three security men, Jaffe, Marcus, and Alpern, with the three AK-47’s. The AK’s were placed to cover the entire east slope of the hill with intersecting fire. There was an average of one person every thirty meters. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t hopeless, either.

  Dobkin found a steward, Daniel Jacoby, and asked him to figure out a way of making coffee to take out to the perimeter.

  Hausner and Dobkin stopped at Brin’s position. A young girl in a bright blue jumpsuit was asleep sitting up with her back to a mound of earth near Brin. Hausner spoke. “Who’s she?”

  Brin looked up from the scope. “Naomi Haber, a stenographer. She volunteered to be my runner. I’ll need someone to pass the word if I see anything.”

  Hausner nodded. “Have you seen anything?”

  “No.”

  “After the moon sets you will.”

  “I know.”

  * * *

  Hausner and Dobkin stood a distance from Brin and the sleeping girl. They both stared silently down into Babylon.

  Hausner lit a cigarette. “Well?”

  Dobkin shook his head. “I don’t know. It
depends on how determined the assault is. A regular infantry unit of platoon size could take this hill if they were good. On the other hand, a five-hundred-man battalion couldn’t take it if they were bad. To assault a defensive postion, no matter how lightly defended, takes a special kind of nerve.

  “Do you think that bunch has it?”

  “Who knows? How charismatic a leader is Rish? Will men die for him? For their cause? We don’t even know how many there are. Let’s wait for Burg’s report.”

  “Right.” Hausner looked eastward down the slope. He could make out ribbons of water shining in the moonlight and large stretches of glistening marsh. Yet the area was basically dead. Sand and clay. It was hard to believe that Mesopotamia had supported millions of people in ancient times. He could see a low wall almost a kilometer away and beyond that the road they had started to land on. “Do you really know this place, Ben?”

  “I can probably draw a map of it from memory. In fact, in the morning, when I get my landmarks oriented, I will draw us a nice military map.”

  “How did these Palestinians get here, I wonder.”

  “How do guerrillas get anywhere?”

  “They had a few trucks.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Heavy weapons? Mortars?”

  “I hope to God not,” said Dobkin.

  “They wanted to keep us hostage—captive—in Babylon. That’s almost funny.”

  “It wouldn’t have been if we’d landed on that road,” said Dobkin. “I wonder if we made the right move?”

  “We might never know,” said Hausner. He lit a cigarette and put his cold hands in his pockets. “Maybe Asher Avidar made the right move.”

  “Maybe.”

  Hausner looked to the north. About three-quarters of a kilometer away was a tall hill that rose dramatically from the flat plain. Hausner recognized it as a tell. “What’s that?”

  Dobkin followed his stare. “That’s the hill of Babil. Some archeologists identify it as the location of the Tower of Babel.”

  Hausner stared. “Do you believe it?”

  “Who knows?”

  He looked around. “Can we see the Hanging Gardens from here?”

  Dobkin laughed. “I don’t give tours on the Sabbath.” He put his big hand on Hausner’s shoulder. “I’m curious to see what I can identify from here when the sun comes up. The main ruin is to the south. There.”

  “Does anyone live around here?”

  “The Arabs don’t like it. They think it’s haunted. Do you know the verses from Isaiah?”

  “You mean . . . ‘neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. . . . But wild beasts . . . shall lie there. . . . And dragons in their pleasant palaces. . . .’ That one?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Yet, there’s a shepherds’ hut here.”

  Dobkin nodded. “And there is a small village located among the ruins, in spite of the Biblical injunction against this place.”

  Hausner put out his cigarette and saved the stub. “Can that village be any help to us?”

  “I don’t think so. I used to debrief Army Intelligence men back from Iraq. A lot of Iraqi villages are primitive beyond belief. Some of these people don’t even know they are Iraqi citizens. They live like the first Mesopotamian peasants who began civilization here five thousand years ago.”

  “Then we’re not near any type of modern transportation or communication?”

  “Hillah to the south. But I wouldn’t count on their knowing we’re here.” He paused and seemed to remember something. “There is a small museum and a guest house in the south part of the ruins by the Ishtar Gate.”

  Hausner turned his head quickly toward Dobkin. “Go on.”

  “The Iraqi Department of Antiquities built both structures about twenty years ago. I know the curator of the museum. Dr. Al-Thanni. I saw him in Athens only six months ago. We write via a mutal friend in Cyprus.”

  “Are you serious?” Hausner began pacing. “Could you get there?”

  “Jacob, we are what is called in military siege terminology, invested. That means surrounded. Just as we have sentinels and firing positions up here, you can be sure they have the same around this entire mound.”

  “But if you could slip through—”

  “The chances are that Dr. Al-Thanni won’t be there until the end of April when the tourist season begins.”

  “There must be a telephone.”

  “There probably is. And running water. And I’ll give you one guess where Rish’s command post must be.”

  Hausner stopped pacing. “Still, if you could get there—to the guest house or the museum—it’s a link with civilization. Al-Thanni may be there. You may be able to get a jeep. Or the telephone might be unguarded. What do you say, Ben?”

  Dobkin looked south across the uneven landscape. He could make out the silhouettes of some excavated ruins. It was at least two kilometers to the Ishtar Gate excavation. There would be only a thin line of sentinels surrounding the hill. Still, he’d want to see it by daylight at least once. “I’m game. But if I’m caught they will make me tell them all I know about our setup here. Everyone talks, Jacob. You know that.”

  “Of course I know that.”

  “I’d have to have a pistol to . . . to make sure I didn’t fall into their hands. Can we spare that?”

  “I don’t think so, Ben.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “A knife,” offered Hausner.

  Dobkin laughed. “You know, I never understood where our ancestors got the balls to fall on their own swords. That takes a bit of nerve. And it must be very, very painful.” He looked off into the distance. “I don’t know if I could do that.”

  “Well,” said Hausner, “let’s ask around and see if anyone has some kind of medicine that’s fatal in an overdose.”

  “I appreciate the pains you’re taking to facilitate my suicide.”

  “There are over fifty people—”

  “I know. Yes, I’ll go. But only after I’ve seen it in the daylight. I’ll leave at nightfall tomorrow.”

  “We may not be alive that long.”

  “It’s worth the wait. I’ll have a better chance of success. If I go tonight, I’ll only be throwing my life away. I don’t want to do that. I want to succeed.”

  “Of course.”

  * * *

  Isaac Burg approached, puffing on his pipe. He walked heavily like someone who has just completed a disagreeable task.

  Hausner and Dobkin walked to meet him. Hausner spoke first. “Did he talk?”

  “Everyone talks.”

  Hausner nodded. “Is he . . . ?”

  “Oh, no. He’s alive. Actually, I didn’t have to lean on him very hard. He wanted to talk.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re all like that. Dobkin will tell you. You’ve seen it yourself at Ramla. It’s a mixture of bragging, shock, nervousness, and fright.” He studied his pipe for a second. “Also, I promised him I’d send him back to his friends.”

  Dobkin shook his head. “We can’t do that. Military regulations. Anyone who sees the inside of a defensive area can’t be repatriated until hostilities are ended. It’s the same here as anywhere else.”

  “Well,” said Burg, “in my world—spies and secret agents, I mean—we do things differently. I promised. And you can make an exception for medical reasons. Besides, he hasn’t seen much. There’s no use letting a man die just because we don’t have medical facilities.”

  “I’ll think about it,” said Dobkin.

  Hausner listened to them argue. It wasn’t a heated argument but purely a disagreement over the interpretation of the rules. Burg was, at best, an enigma, thought Hausner. One minute he was prepared to torture a man to death and the next he was trying to save his life. And if he did let the Arab go, and they came back and took the hill and captured Burg alive, the Arabs would make certain that Burg died very slowly. If he were Burg, reflected Hausner, he would k
ill the man and bury him deep. And Dobkin—he was the perfect soldier. Loyal, intelligent, even inventive. But he did like his book of regulations. Hausner became impatient with their argument. “Never mind this. What did he say?”

  Burg knocked his pipe on his shoe. “Say? He said lots of things. He said his name was Muhammad Assad and that he was an Ashbal. You know the word. A Tiger Cub—a Palestinian orphan of the wars with Israel. In fact, that outfit down there is all Ashbals. They were all raised by Palestinian guerilla organizations. Now they are all grown up. And they don’t like us.”

  Dobkin nodded. “War leaves many legacies. This is the worst.” He thought about the Ashbals. How many hollow-eyed, tattered waifs had he seen sobbing over the bodies of their parents amid the rubble of Arab villages? War. Now they were all grown up, these young victims. They were nightmares that came back in the day. “They don’t like us at all,” agreed Dobkin.

  “Quite right,” said Burg. “They are a dangerous lot. They’ve been indoctrinated with hate since the day they could comprehend. They reject all normal standards of behavior. Hatred of Israel is their tribal religion.” He patted his pocket for his tobacco pouch and found it. “Also, they’ve been taught military skills since they could walk. They are a damned well-trained group.”

  “How many?” asked Dobkin.

  “A hundred and fifty.”

  There was a silence.

  “You’re certain?” asked Hausner.

  Burg nodded.

  “How can you be certain?”

  Burg smiled. “That’s one of the things all soldiers lie about, isn’t it, Ben? How many. At first, he said five hundred. I didn’t buy that. That’s what all the screaming was about. Finally, we agreed on a hundred and fifty.”

  Dobkin nodded. “Heavy weapons?”

  Burg shook his head. “They weren’t expecting resistance. Almost all of them are armed with AK-47 rifles, however.”

  “They must have a base close by,” said Dobkin.

  “Not so close. In the Shamiyah Desert. That’s on the other side of the Euphrates. A good hundred kilometers from here. The Iraqi government suffers the existence of the camp for a variety of very familiar reasons. Anyway, they came here in late January by truck, before the floods. They have been waiting for orders ever since. Then a few hours ago, Rish flew in and called them on the radio. The rest is history—in the making.”